• Question: will i ever be able to see a dinosaur like jurassic park?

    Asked by anon-209866 to Verity, Sergio, Nick, Maria, David, Annette on 12 Mar 2019.
    • Photo: Maria Walach

      Maria Walach answered on 12 Mar 2019:

      Scientists are working on recreating dinosaurs in a similar way, but we are a long way off! Currently, they are trying to create Mammoths by adding their DNA to elephant’s DNA!
      Your best bet would be to use a virtual reality (VR) headset, which lets you see things in 3D as if they were real!
      Or you could become a palaeontologist and work out how to bring back dinosaurs yourself!

    • Photo: Nick Werren

      Nick Werren answered on 12 Mar 2019:

      There’s a big debate at the moment about mammoths – should we bring these animals back? They haven’t existed for thousands of years and could change the eco-system.

      The way that they would bring mammoths back is by creating a mammoth embryo inside an elephant that would then give birth to a baby mammoth!

      However, there’s a problem with dinosaurs – dinosaurs were around a VERY long time ago, and to recreate them we need their DNA. DNA decays over time and it’s very unlikely that we will find dinosaur DNA lying around. The mammoth DNA was preserved inside ice, so maybe we’ll find a dinosaur preserved in ice one day, and use it’s DNA to create new ones.

      There’s a lot to think about with dinosaurs – should we bring them back? Would it be cruel? Would they survive in the modern environment? They might not be immune to diseases and microbes that are all around our ecosystem!

      So the answer of your question is maybe, it might be possible in the future!

    • Photo: David Whitworth

      David Whitworth answered on 12 Mar 2019:

      This has been answered wonderfully by Nick and Maria, and I do think one day we will be able to do it. But for me it is mostly an ethical question, just because we can, does it mean we should? Will bringing them back bring back other things like diseases and microbes that the human body can’t handle, or will they be able to handle our modern bacteria. What affect will they have on habitats, the local environment, the floura and fauna?

      I would love to see the old dinos, but is it really a good idea? There are now a few movies which seem to think its a bad idea!

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